TLDR
REA Group has agreed to remove contract clauses that required agents to list all or most properties on realestate.com.au, after an Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) investigation. Agents can now choose rival platforms and downgrade to cheaper listing tiers. The undertaking is court-enforceable but REA admitted no wrongdoing.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
What REA's contracts required
Australia's largest residential property portal had a requirement baked into its agency agreements: list all, or the majority of, your properties on realestate.com.au. REA's contracts with real estate agencies contained clauses that required all properties to be listed on realestate.com.au and included incentives to list properties with higher fees, limiting the ability of rival listing services to compete.[1] For an agent, pushing back on those terms was never a neutral choice. realestate.com.au commands the dominant share of Australia's digital property advertising market, so the cost of walking away kept most agents in line.
Agents ended up sitting between a dominant platform's contract on one side and vendor expectations on the other. In practice, the platform's terms functioned like industry regulation, just without the parliamentary process.
How the ACCC got involved
The regulator opened its investigation in May 2025, probing whether REA's agency agreements foreclosed rival services and limited consumer choice. The ACCC heard from many real estate agents who raised concerns about REA's contract requirements.[1] No named agents or industry bodies were cited in the regulator's release.
Section 45 of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 prohibits contracts that substantially lessen competition.[3] That was the legal frame the ACCC was working within, even though it never tested the question in court.
What REA agreed to, and what it did not admit
Under the undertaking, REA Group committed not to require or incentivise real estate agency customers to list all or the majority of their properties for sale or rent on realestate.com.au and to provide greater flexibility for agents to downgrade listings to lower listing tiers.[2] No legal proceedings were issued and there was no finding of legal wrongdoing against REA. The company acknowledged the ACCC's concerns and left it there.[2]
The ACCC resolved a significant platform-power case without a single day in court and without extracting an admission. The undertaking is enforceable, but the legal record stays clean for REA. It is the same template the regulator has reached for elsewhere in its digital-intermediary work: change the behaviour, skip the courtroom.
ACCC Chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb said: "REA's undertaking resolves this issue in a timely manner and addresses our concerns. We expect that ultimately the benefits will flow from the real estate agents to their clients, Australian property owners."[1]
Cass-Gottlieb also said the outcome "is a win for competition in the real estate listing market and is expected to enable real estate agents to offer their vendor or landlord clients the listing service that best meets their property advertising needs."[1]
What changes for agents and property marketers
Agents can now direct properties to competing platforms without breaching their realestate.com.au agreement. They can also slot listings into cheaper tiers rather than being pushed toward premium products. For property marketers advising vendors on where to spend, that opens a genuine conversation about budget allocation that was structurally closed before.
realestate.com.au holds the dominant position in Australian residential property advertising and that market reality does not shift because a contract clause disappeared. Rival platforms still need to build audience and convince agents to split their spend. The new rules make that possible, though not straightforward.
The ACCC's investigation into REA sits alongside broader scrutiny of digital intermediaries across Australian media and tech markets. Regulators are asking the same question in each case: when one platform controls the only viable shop window for an industry, do its contract terms function as private regulation? In REA's case, the ACCC decided they did, and acted accordingly.
SOURCES & CITATIONS
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
What did REA Group agree to change?
Did the ACCC find REA broke the law?
What does this mean for real estate agents and their clients?
Does this weaken realestate.com.au's market position?
James Dore is Strategy Director at Bushnote, a leader in SEO and AEO in Australia. He writes on search, AI and the technology decisions shaping government and industry.
